For One Man, Hawaii Is a Land of Problems

The Descendants

From left, George Clooney, Shailene Woodley and Amara Miller in "The Descendants."Credit
Fox Searchlight

In a voice-over at the beginning of “The Descendants,” Matt King (George Clooney) challenges the myth, endemic among mainlanders, that Hawaii, where he lives, is a paradise on earth. His brief rant is buttressed by images of poverty and grime that are powerful but also slightly misleading, since Matt’s story is not — or at least not explicitly — one of deprivation or social inequality.

Though he is a bit uncomfortable about admitting it (and though he tries to live a life of low-key, middle-class normalcy), Matt, a real estate lawyer, is as close to an aristocrat as it is possible for an American to be. His family tree stretches back to the earliest white settlers in Hawaii and includes indigenous royalty as well. This bloodline has devolved into a gaggle of pale loafers in loud shirts and sandals — Matt’s cousins — who own a pristine and picturesque tract of land on Kauai. Matt, the trustee of this precious birthright, is in charge of selling it off to developers.

This land deal is big news locally, but it is in some ways the least of Matt’s problems, a reminder of the burdens of an identity he both takes for granted and wishes he could shed. His wife, Elizabeth (Patricia Hastie), lies in an irreversible coma in a Honolulu hospital after a boating accident. Shortly after Elizabeth’s doctors inform Matt that he is about to become a widower, he learns that she has made him a cuckold.

Her impending death and the revelation of her past infidelity send Matt into a tailspin. The double wound also establishes what would seem to be Matt’s unshakable claim on the audience’s sympathy, which Mr. Clooney’s self-effacing charm helps to secure. But Mr. Clooney and the director, Alexander Payne (working from a script Mr. Payne adapted, with Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, from Kaui Hart Hemmings’s novel), proceed to shake up our expectations all the same.

The way Matt’s predicament plays out is surprising, moving and frequently very funny. Mr. Payne — immeasurably aided by a dazzlingly gifted, doggedly disciplined cast — nimbly sidesteps the sentimental traps that lurk within the film’s premise. He somehow achieves the emotional impact of good melodrama and the hectic absurdity of classic farce without ever seeming to exaggerate. There are times when you laugh or gasp in disbelief at what has just happened — an old man punches a teenager in the face; a young girl utters an outrageous obscenity; Mr. Clooney slips on a pair of boat shoes and runs, like an angry, flightless bird, to a neighbor’s house — and yet every moment of the movie feels utterly and unaffectedly true.

Matt, who describes himself as “the back-up parent, the understudy” is suddenly forced to manage his two difficult daughters. The younger one, Scottie (Amara Miller), who is 10, is angry and confused, while her 17-year-old sister, Alex (Shailene Woodley), just seems angry. She has a troubled past, a bad attitude and a grudge against her mother that she refuses to relinquish in spite of Elizabeth’s condition.

The emotional trajectory of “The Descendants” is familiar enough. It is about the fracturing and healing that take place within families. Matt needs to bond with his children, make peace with his wife and deal with the pesky politics of entitled cousins. As he works his way through these challenges and others, including a confrontation with his wife’s lover (Matthew Lillard), a lively and complicated mesh of plots and subplots takes shape, but the most striking and satisfying aspects of “The Descendants” are its unhurried pace and loose, wandering structure.

In most movies the characters are locked into the machinery of narrative like theme park customers strapped into a roller coaster. Their ups and downs are as predetermined as their shrieks of terror and sighs of relief, and the audience goes along for the ride. But the people in this movie seem to move freely within it, making choices and mistakes and aware, at every turn, that things could be different.

Matt in particular is overwhelmed, and sometimes paralyzed, by the necessity of choosing, and the brilliance of Mr. Clooney’s performance lies in his ability to convey indecision, hesitation and the precipitous tumble into error. Matt gets a lot of things right in the end, but along the way he mishandles nearly everything, sometimes because of impulsiveness and sometimes because he is paralyzed, unable to trust or locate his own best instincts.

This actor’s instincts, meanwhile, have never been keener or more generous. Mr. Clooney, bolstered by his effortless magnetism, has always been an excellent ensemble player, and while he is at the center of “The Descendants,” he does not dominate the movie. Everyone in it is wonderful: Ms. Woodley (“The Secret Life of the American Teenager”), giving one of the toughest, smartest, most credible adolescent performances in recent memory; Nick Krause as her goofy sidekick, Sid; Robert Forster as Elizabeth’s permanently enraged father; Beau Bridges as Matt’s cousin Hugh.

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I could go on and on. As the wife of Elizabeth’s lover, Judy Greer, in just a few scenes, slices to the heart of the movie’s marital crisis. But each person who shows up on screen, even for a minute or two with nothing especially important to accomplish, has an odd and memorable individuality. “The Descendants,” streamlining Ms. Hemmings’s ample and engaging book, seems to unfold within a vast landscape of possible stories. What happens to Matt, Scottie and Alex is just a thread in a tapestry of incidents and relationships that has no real end.

Mr. Payne, with a light touch and a keen sense of place — this Hawaii is as real and peculiar as the Nebraska of “About Schmidt” or the California wine country of “Sideways” — has made a movie that, for all its modesty, is as big as life. Its heart is occupied by grief, pain and the haunting silence of Elizabeth, whose version of events is the only one we never hear. And yet it is also full of warmth, humor and the kind of grace that can result from our clumsy attempts to make things better.

To call “The Descendants” perfect would be a kind of insult, a betrayal of its commitment to, and celebration of, human imperfection. Its flaws are impossible to distinguish from its pleasures. For example: after what feels as if it should be the final scene, a poignant, quiet tableau of emotional resolution and apt visual beauty, Mr. Payne adds another, a prosaic coda to a flight of poetry. Without saying too much or spoiling the mood, I will say that I was grateful for this extra minute, a small gift at the end of a film that understands, in every way, how hard it can be to say goodbye.